Megan Smolenyak takes readers behind the scenes in many of the genealogical cases she has researched for television, magazines, newspapers, and federal and local governmental agencies. The cases she researches are high interest, with subjects including celebrities, politicians, and other notable persons. When it comes to describing her methodology, Smolenyak mostly sticks to generalities, making me wonder if she considers her research methods to be trade secrets. Her methodology sometimes seems unorthodox, but this may be due to the nature of her assignments. She often works under tight deadlines, which would make it difficult to conduct the reasonably exhaustive research required by the Genealogical Proof Standard. Cautiously recommended. ( )

Disappointing - a very long commercial for the author's wonderfulness. ( )

This book was great fun: real-life mysteries solved through genealogical sleuthing. Admittedly, I'm geeky and enjoy research, but this is absolutely readable for anyone.
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I found this book interesting but I do want to stress this book will not tell you how to search on your own it is written by a veteran genealogist about some of the cases she has worked on. Okay now that I have that out of the way… this book was with fun all the stories and history.

I found it very interesting that the First Lady Michelle Obama’s family only took 3 generations to go from slaves to the white house I found that fascinating because I come from a family that had 5 generations living for many years as I was growing up.

The unclaimed person’s chapter and the ones about finding soldiers families were probably my favorite chapters because bringing these people home to their families is a wonderful project even when some of these families didn’t even know they had these relatives.

The author’s research is very thorough and I found the chapter about the tombstone fascinating, what she had to go through to get this tombstone where it belonged.

I was fascinated by all the DNA testing I am a fan of Who Do You Think You Are? & PBS Finding Your Roots and would love to have the ancestral composition done just for my own curiosity and may spring 100 bucks to 23andme to get that and be entered into the database.

If you are interested in other people’s history and like seeing how family can be found I would recommend this book.

3 ½ Stars ( )